


Not-So-Dead-Beat-Dad(or Do You Believe In Miracles?)

by Annie17851



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 13:01:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1606133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annie17851/pseuds/Annie17851
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Angels meet on the battlefield. Father is watching. Character deaths, but it's all good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not-So-Dead-Beat-Dad(or Do You Believe In Miracles?)

**Author's Note:**

> Have not read spoilers; maybe 9x23 will go like this, probably not.

Not-So-Deadbeat-Dad  
(or Do You Believe in Miracles?)

 

(The Father was not gone. Not at all. He had been paying attention. He had been waiting. Waiting a really long time, actually.)

The war between the angels escalated so much more quickly than either the Winchesters or Castiel anticipated. The battle was met at Stull Cemetery, exactly where another battle between good and evil had raged not so very long ago. Sam and Dean Winchester fought against the angels of Metatron with Castiel’s army, always close to the front lines, always right behind the angel with whom they had fought so many times before.

Blood of the vessels was everywhere. Sam, Dean and Castiel were drenched in it, fighting their way through hordes determined to kill them. Blinding light from the dying angels seared their vision, making it harder to distinguish friend from foe.

Sam had an angel blade and the demon knife. The blood and gore building up on his clothing was starting to slow him down. As he ran the angel blade through yet another vessel, he wondered, a bit hysterically, if he would be better off just fighting shirtless. Two more of Metatron’s minions tried to jump him from either side and he used both weapons in sync, drenching himself yet again. 

Castiel’s human vessel was tiring. He, too, was getting weighed down by the blood of his brothers and sisters, both the faithful and the not so. The stolen Grace inside him was dwindling more and more as he fought on. He knew he deserved to die for good on this battlefield. No angel could steal another’s Grace and not pay a heavy price. When the fading power inside him was finally extinguished, his human vessel would be finished for good. Fighting off angels on all sides, Castiel tried to keep watch on Sam and Dean, make sure they weren’t injured, or worse, dead. One of the enemy slashed through the shoulder of his trenchcoat with an angel blade. Castiel managed to see him just in time and kicked the man’s feet out from under him, causing the blade to cut through the materiel, but not Cas’ vessel’s skin. Castiel had to save as much Grace as he could for as long as he could. Momentarily in the clear, he looked for Sam and Dean.

Dean Winchester was not tired at all. He held only the First Blade, the power from the weapon burning up through his arm to the Mark of Cain. He was as sodden with blood and gore as his brother and Castiel, but that wasn’t slowing him down in the least. He slashed and stabbed his way through body after body, not even stopping to ascertain if he was slaying friend or enemy. His mind was a red burning haze of hatred, pushing him always forward, powerfully decimating everyone in his way. Angels attacked him from all sides and he swung the First Blade in every direction, hitting his targets without fail. With every step forward his boots plowed through more and more blood-soaked earth. He was driven, possessed and merciless.

Sam and Castiel both happened to look in Dean’s direction at the same time, some chance feeling pulling their attention to where the hunter was slaying furiously. Something was going all wrong, they felt it, and ran toward Dean from opposite directions. 

“Dean! Dean!” Sam was yelling as loudly as he could manage, running as fast as he could, leaping over the bodies strewn everywhere, slashing automatically at anyone in his way, while at the same time Castiel was screaming for Dean to turn around.

The First Blade was buried to the hilt in a huge, bear of a figure standing before Dean. Dean was struggling to get the Blade free, and it took only a half second too long. The angel Sam and Cas had seen, the one racing toward Dean’s back with the angel blade aimed right between the hunter’s shoulder blades – that angel was fast.

The angel blade sank to the hilt in Dean’s back. Dean’s hands flew off the hilt of the First Blade when the instant, agonizing pain hit, the huge man he had just killed falling off to the side. Sam arrived screaming, sinking his own blade into Dean’s attacker. Castiel got there a split second later, falling to the ground beside Dean, horror overtaking him.

Nonononononono just kept tearing through Castiel’s mind as he tentatively, helplessly, put his hands on Dean’s chest. The angel blade had gone all the way through. Dean was gasping in pain and barely able to breathe. Sam knelt next to them, equally horrified, fighting back tears at the sight of the silver tip of blade visible coming through Dean’s shirt. Sam looked around frantically, saw that the battle was dwindling, had moved away from them a bit. Turned his full attention to his wounded big brother.

Dean was trying to speak through the pain. “Take it out……out...out…” he kept repeating, through teeth clenched against horrific pain.

Sam and Castiel exchanged glances, Sam shaking his head minutely.

“Dean,” Sam told him, voice breaking. “We……I don’t think we can…..you’ll……..”

Dean gripped his brother’s sleeve desperately, blood from Sam’s shirt soaking through his fingers, adding to the blood pooling so quickly on his chest and stomach.

“Out, Sammy!” he gasped.

“Okay, okay,” Sam gave in. “Cas, help me.”

Sam put his hands gently under Dean’s shoulders, and with Cas’ help, managed to get his brother’s upper body into a sitting position. Dean screamed through the pain the whole way up, finally collapsing against Castiel. 

“Dean,” Castiel breathed helplessly, replacing Sam’s hands on Dean’s shoulders with his own, pulling Dean in to rest against the angel’s chest, blood from the wounds soaking into Cas’ clothes quickly. Cas didn’t care. Just held his hunter close, saw the green of his eyes glazing over and the angel’s insides twisted painfully at the sight.

Sam put his hand as firmly as he could on the bloody hilt of the angel blade.

“Dean…..” he tried to protest one more time, but Dean’s bloody-wet moan of “Do it,” gasped into Castiel’s chest made the decision for him. Dean was dying either way.

Sam looked desperately at Castiel, saw the tears running down the angel’s distressed face, nodded slightly through his own veil of tears and braced himself. Castiel held Dean even more tightly to himself, felt the racing, uneven pounding of Dean’s heart against his vessel’s chest, the hot stickiness of the blood pooling between them, felt the brittle, sour fear in the little bit of Grace he had left.

“On three,” Sam said determinedly, but he pulled at the blade fiercely on “one”, his insides shattering at the scream his action tore from Dean.

Sam flung the blade as far away from them as he could, hit his knees again to be next to his brother. Castiel was holding Dean so tightly, looked so destroyed by what was happening that Sam couldn’t bring himself to take Dean away from the angel’s embrace, even though he desperately wanted to. He moved to sit in the blood-soaked mud next to Cas, laid his head on the angel’s shoulder and looked into the fading light in Dean’s eyes.

Dean was still gasping for breath, couldn’t talk at all now, and Sam took his brother’s hand in his, shutting out the sounds of the battle that was moving farther away from them now.

“Why aren’t you fixing him, Cas?” Sam asked quietly, disturbed that the angel had made no move yet to save Dean, knowing Castiel’s Grace wasn’t doing so well, knowing, too, that if Cas hadn’t fixed Dean already, then he probably couldn’t.

Castiel didn’t answer him, sat in silence with his forehead resting on top of Dean’s head, his hands gently stroking Dean’s back through all the blood still pouring from the wound.

“Cas!” Sam insisted. “Castiel! There’s no time!” he cried frantically.

Castiel took a long, shuddering breath and looked up forlornly.

“There is still some time. I have enough Grace to help him heal. Not enough to do it fully, but enough that you can help him heal the rest of the way yourself. My Grace is not mine, Sam. It is stolen Grace, and it is almost gone. When it is gone, I will be, too. Never to return. An angel cannot steal another angel’s Grace and be allowed to exist. I just…..while Dean is still here…..I just wanted to say good-bye..”

Castiel gripped Dean tighter to him, just fractionally, forcing more of the hunter’s blood to seep between’s the angel’s fingers. Dean was unconscious now, and Castiel could hear the slow, ponderous working of his heart, knew he had so little time left.  
Cas closed his blue eyes and laid his scruffy cheek against Dean’s face. He moved one of his hands up to the back of Dean’s neck and sighed, pouring the little bit of stolen Grace he had left into the dying hunter.

(And there it was, the understanding the Father had been waiting for. The knowledge that the human was so much more to the angel than a simple charge, the total sacrifice of everything for a Righteous Man. Just one more thing to wait for now.)

Sam could see the angel weakening and moved quickly to sit behind him, hold him up, arms around both of the men, both his brothers, one in blood, one in friendship. He rested his head against the back of Castiel’s neck, unable to stop the tears from coming. Sam heard a terrible gurgle in Dean’s chest, heard a soft sigh of Dean’s name and then everything was silent.

Holding on to Castiel and Dean, Sam realized somewhere in the back of his mind that the battle had ended. He didn’t even care to know which side had won. One or both of his brothers were now gone for good.

Dean gasped suddenly, moving fractionally in Castiel’s arms. Sam eased the angel’s body down to the ground, helping Dean to lie back in the mud. Sam glanced worriedly over to where the First Blade was still buried in the last angel Dean had used it on, but Dean didn’t seem to care about it anymore. Sam lifted Dean’s bloody sleeve to check and was amazed to discover the burning welt was gone.

“Dean,” Sam shook his brother’s shoulder gently. The blood had stopped, Dean’s heart was beating and he was breathing painlessly. “Come on, Dean, wake up!”

Dean groaned and tried to roll over. Sam helped him into a sitting position and Dean looked around dazedly, trying to clear his head. He reached up and patted Sam’s cheek weakly, glancing around at the battlefield as he did so.

“Where’s Cas? Who won?” Dean asked, almost in the same breath, struggling against Sam’s mass to stand up, just a bit unsteadily. 

Sam laid a restraining hand on Dean’s arm. “I’m not sure, and right there,” Sam answered him tentatively, pointing to the ground behind Dean.

Dean spun around as quickly as the muddy ground would let him, the unbelievable sight of Castiel on the ground, apparently lifeless, making him momentarily unable to move. Or breathe. Or think. 

Then: “What…..Cas….no!” as Dean dropped heavily to the ground beside the fallen angel. He could see no obvious wounds, and so gripped Cas tightly by the arms, trying to shake him awake. His head whirled around to face Sam, anger and hurt darkening his face. “What the fuck, Sam! What happened? Who did this?”

“Cas did it to himself,” he told Dean quietly, and then told him the story, backing away from Dean just a little at his brother’s reaction. 

Dean was distraught, enraged. “And you let him?!” he railed at Sam, looking back to the angel’s face, one still-bloody hand resting on a stubbly, cool cheek.

“Dean, he wanted to do it! He just…….he wanted to…..”

Dean stood to face his brother angrily. “I don’t care, Sam! He deserved to live a lot more than I do! He was an angel! Look at me! Look at all I’ve done! I don’t deserve to be here and I don’t want to be here if there’s no ……no Cas anymore.” Dean told him brokenly.

(And there was the other thing. The Righteous Man knows he needs the angel by his side, knows he is not complete without his other, spiritual, half. The Father is done waiting.)

Castiel groaned, a barely-there sound, but Dean heard it anyway and dropped back down to the angel’s- his angel’s- side. 

“Cas, come on, Cas! Wake up! Castiel!” Dean shouted, heart skipping madly as the angel’s so-blue eyes fluttered open.

“Hello, Dean,” the hunter heard, the best sound ever, as far as Dean was concerned. 

“Cas, thank God!” Dean whispered, and Cas looked confused for a moment, brow furrowed, listening to something Dean couldn’t hear.

“Heaven is open.” Cas said matter-of-factly, sitting up. “Metatron is defeated and the surviving angels have returned home. Except, I am still here.”

Dean looked at him sadly. “So, they won’t let you back? Even though you won the war for them?”

Castiel shook his head slowly. “Father is there. He said he never left. He said I can go back. I have my own Grace back now, my reward, I suppose.”

“You’ll be going then?” Dean asked quietly, looking up at Sam, noting the sadness on his brother’s face- almost as much sadness as Dean felt in his heart. 

“I can stay with you if I wish, and that is what I am going to do,” Castiel, angel of the Lord, replied softly.  
Dean and Sam helped him up from the bloodied, muddy ground. They trudged wearily out of Stull Cemetery, hopefully never to return.

“What about the Blade?” Sam asked quietly.

Dean considered a moment. “Call Garth – tell him to come get it and bury it somewhere. Somewhere deep. I can’t touch it again.”

“A good decision,” Castiel agreed quietly.

“So, pie?” Dean suggested lightly.

Sam snorted. “Shower- then pie.”

 

So, Heaven was open again, Metatron was defeated, and Sam, Dean and their angel lived to fight another day. Together.


End file.
